In an extensive revision of this important book, first published by Plenum in 1980, a distinguished roster of contributors reconsider this much heralded ...

This article looks at three historical efforts to coordinate the scientific study of biological and cultural aspects of human consciousness into a single comprehensive theory of human development that includes the evolution of the human body, cultural evolution and personal development: specifically, the research programs of Wilhelm Wundt, Lev Vygotsky and Albert Bandura. The lack of historical relations between these similar efforts is striking, and suggests that the effort to promote cultural and personal sources of consciousness arises as a natural (...) foil to an overemphasis on the biological basis of consciousness, sometimes associated with biological determinism. (shrink)

The void is deadly. If you were cast into a void, it would cause you to die in just a few minutes. It would suck the air from your lungs. It would boil your blood. It would drain the warmth from your body. And it would inflate enclosures in your body until they burst}.

is the second-order theory of the part-whole relation. It can express such hypotheses about the size of Reality as that there are inaccessibly many atoms. Take a non-empty class to have exactly its non-empty subclasses as parts; hence, its singleton subclasses as atomic parts. Then standard set theory becomes the theory of the member-singleton function—better, the theory of all singleton functions—within the framework of megethology. Given inaccessibly many atoms and a specification of which atoms are urelements, a singleton function exists, (...) unique up to isomorphism. (This article is partly abridged from my Parts of Classes, partly a sequel.). (shrink)

Refutes the methodological separatists who hold that the logic of explanation and testing in the human sciences is fundamentally different than in the natural sciences, and develops complementary accounts for interpretation and explanation, ...

Counterfactuals is David Lewis' forceful presentation of and sustained argument for a particular view about propositions which express contrary to fact conditionals, including his famous defense of realism about possible worlds and his theory of laws of nature.

This book is a defense of modal realism; the thesis that our world is but one of a plurality of worlds, and that the individuals that inhabit our world are only a few out of all the inhabitants of all the worlds. Lewis argues that the philosophical utility of modal realism is a good reason for believing that it is true.

In re-examining the concepts of desire, intention, and trying, David K. Chan brings a fresh approach toward resolving many of the problems that have occupied philosophers of action for almost a century. This book not only presents a complete theory of human agency but also, by developing the conceptual tools needed to do moral philosophy, lays the groundwork for formulating an ethics that is rooted in a clear, intuitive, and coherent moral psychology.

David Kellogg Lewis (1941-2001) was one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century. He made significant contributions to almost every area of analytic philosophy including metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science, and set the agenda for various debates in these areas which carry on to this day. In several respects he remains a contemporary figure, yet enough time has now passed for historians of philosophy to begin to study his place in twentieth (...) century thought. His philosophy was constructed and refined not just through his published writing, but also crucially through his life-long correspondence with fellow philosophers, including leading figures such as D.M. Armstrong, Saul Kripke, W.V. Quine, J.J.C. Smart, and Peter van Inwagen. His letters formed the undercurrent of his published work and became the medium through which he proposed many of his well-known theories and discussed a range of philosophical topics in depth. A selection of his vast correspondence over a 40-year period is presented here across two volumes. The letters offer an organic story of the origins, development, breadth, and depth of his philosophy in its historical context, as well as a glimpse into the influence of his many interlocutors."-- OCLC OLUC. (shrink)

This volume is devoted to Lewis's work in metaphysics and epistemology. Topics covered include properties, ontology, possibility, truthmaking, probability, the mind-body problem, vision, belief, and knowledge. The purpose of this collection, and the volumes that precede and follow it, is to disseminate more widely the work of an eminent and influential contemporary philosopher. The volume will serve as a useful work of reference for teachers and students of philosophy.

(2001). Locke‐Stewart‐Mill: Philosophy of science at Dartmouth College, 1771‐1854. International Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 167-175.

In this paper, I discuss virtue ethics in relation to the rejection of the use of lethal violence. I argue that, given how I apply virtue ethics, a person of good character will have a very strong intrinsic desire to avoid the killing of another human being, so that only in rare circumstances where the alternative to violence is immensely evil would the use of violence to prevent the evil be the morally appropriate choice for the person to make. I (...) first give a brief summary of a neo-Aristotelian version of virtue ethics. Then I explain why I think that a virtuous agent would be strongly averse to killing human beings. I go on to show that this does not mean that such an agent would never use violence on others, only that she would be very reluctant to do so. The circumstances in which she would do so are rare, but cannot be ruled out. For instance, virtuous agents may in very limited cases kill in self-defense despite a strong aversion to killing. The circumstances in which killings take place are found most of all in war, so I close by discussing where the virtue ethics approach to war is positioned in relation to just war theory and pacifism. (shrink)

In Empirical Realism David K. Clark asks, simply: is there a moral structure to the universe?

This is the first of a three-volume collection of David Lewis's most recent papers in all the areas to which he has made significant contributions. The purpose of this collection (and the two volumes to follow) is to disseminate even more widely the work of a preeminent and influential late twentieth-century philosopher. The papers are now offered in a readily accessible format. This first volume is devoted to Lewis's work on philosophical logic from the last twenty-five years. The topics (...) covered include: deploying the methods of formal semantics from artificial formalised languages to natural languages, model-theoretic investigations of intensional logic, contradiction, relevance, the differences between analog and digital representation, and questions arising from the construction of ambitious formalised philosophical systems. The volume will serve as an important reference tool for all philosophers and their students. (shrink)

A solution to the problem of intrinsic change for enduring things should meet three conditions. It should not replace monadic intrinsic properties by relations. It should not replace the having simpliciter of properties by standing in some relation to them. It should not rely on an unexplained notion of having an intrinsic property at a time. Johnston's solution satisfies the first condition at the expense of the second. Haslanger's solution satisfies the first and second at the expense of the third.

In his note "can there be vague objects?" ("analysis", 1978), Gareth evans presents a purported proof that there can be no vague identity statements. Some readers think that evans endorses the proof and its false conclusion. Not so. His point is that those who put vagueness in the world, Rather than in language, Will have no way to fault the proof and no way to escape the false conclusion.

The debate between Jurgen Habermas and Charles Taylor is reflective of the enduring conflict between liberal philosophy with its emphasis upon freedom, equality, and legal rights, and Aristotelianism with its accent upon the cultivation of virtue, personal responsibility and shared notions of the Good. Though grounded in opposite ends of the philosophical spectrum, both men remain critical of the burgeoning effects of instrumental rationality and the social atomization and anomie it continues to generate; both understand the extent to which the (...) self is a social construct and the role of interpersonal intersubjectivity in the development of their individual and collective identities; both argue for the centrality of certain goods in maintaining a minimal degree of social cohesion; and both affirm that the crucial feature of human life is communication and its dialogical character. ;To overcome the adverse manifestations of our positivistic ethos with its over-reliance upon purposive-instrumental reason, each has responded with a countervailing notion of rationality---"phronesis" or Aristotelian practical reason for Taylor and "communicative reason" for Habermas. Each's choice of reason has led to profound differences in their respective notions of the self as well as fundamental incongruities in their moral and political philosophies. In the interest of preserving the autonomy and integrity of the individual while yet affirming universal justice, Habermas argues for the formalism of a "proceduralistic" ethics. Taylor, on the other hand, advocates a "substantialist" one, a communal ethics that arises from out of people's deepest moral intuitions; an ethics bound up with historical values and ideals that stresses the cultivation of virtue and shared notions of the common good. ;I argue that although Habermas's "communicative action" with its focus upon intersubjective communication helps to bridge the competing philosophies of communitarianism and classical liberalism, a basic incommensurability still persists. However, rather than being mutually exclusive, there needs to be a creative, dialectical tension maintained between them whereby each continues to inform and influence the other. In this way, a postmodern ethics rooted in dialogue and communication can be constructed which maintains people's integrity and autonomy while similarly addressing their multiple needs and concerns, but also an ethics grounded in one's deepest moral intuitions which remains sensitive to the concrete, historical, and particularistic distinctions which differentiate their identities. (shrink)

It is advisable to treat some sorts of discourse about fiction with the aid of an intensional operator "in such-And-Such fiction...." the operator may appear either explicitly or tacitly. It may be analyzed in terms of similarity of worlds, As follows: "in the fiction f, A" means that a is true in those of the worlds where f is told as known fact rather than fiction that differ least from our world, Or from the belief worlds of the community in (...) which the fiction originated. (shrink)